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Re: JDPNYY's Question of the day - Sunday 8/23/09

On my Dad's side: very much Irish. My Grandmother was born in County Cork, and had the brogue to prove it.

On my Mom's side: Bohemia. I never heard this side of the family refer to being from Czechoslovakia. Only Bohemia.

I owe an unspeakable debt to my Grandparents and Great Grandparents. For despite where they were born, my parents and I had the great honor and privilege of being born as citizens of the United States.

"But what people tend to forget...is that being a Yankee is as much about character as it is about performance; as much about who you are as what you do."
- President Barack Obama

Re: JDPNYY's Question of the day - Sunday 8/23/09

They were from place that are now Belarus, Poland, and somewhere near the Belarus-Lithuania border, I'm not sure which side...but back then they were all from the Russian Empire.

Most correct, I suppose, would be to say that they were all from The Pale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement You want to say that's not a country, fine, but it's where they were from. They weren't Russians - they were Jews, and they lived where Jews were allowed to live.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Re: JDPNYY's Question of the day - Sunday 8/23/09

They were from place that are now Belarus, Poland, and somewhere near the Belarus-Lithuania border, I'm not sure which side...but back then they were all from the Russian Empire.

Most correct, I suppose, would be to say that they were all from The Pale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement You want to say that's not a country, fine, but it's where they were from. They weren't Russians - they were Jews, and they lived where Jews were allowed to live.

Your ancestors must have been very courageous people, to have survived the intense and systematic discrimination and horrific genocides that they did.

Were your parents born in this country, Dr. John?

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Re: JDPNYY's Question of the day - Sunday 8/23/09

Take your Wikipedia up to Sligo and Mayo and see what THEY say. I went there, and that's what people with my surname told me. Of course, Wilkipedia knows all. I'm sticking to my story and my suntan.

Nah, I don't think Wikipedia knows all. The non-Wikipedia article I mentioned, as well as a few other sources I found when looking up both Black Irish and Black Dutch (for info on my own ancestry), supported the idea that there is a genetic link to the Basques and that the link goes back thousands of years.

"On the Y-chromosome the Celtic populations turn out to be statistically indistinguishable from the Basques," Professor Goldstein said.

Also, Queen Elizabeth had most of the invaders from the Armada put to death. A few, but not many, escaped to Scotland. Aside from the scientific evidence (both for a Basque link and no Spanish link), Major Martin Hume said this in a 1906 edition of The Geographic Journal (a scientific journal of the Royal Geographic Society, published since 1831):

Anyone who goes along the coast of Ireland and along the Devonshire (SW England) coast will in one locality after another find that the inhabitants of this or that village are asserted to be descendants of the men from the Armada wrecked upon their coast; that the dark complexion of the population is owing to the fact that a number of men of the Armada settled and married in that part of the district.

...

There is very small foundation for this, either with regard to Ireland or the West of England. In the end of the year 1588, Fitz William reported that, with the exception of a few score wandering Spaniards, the whole of the rest had been either killed or had escaped to Scotland. In 1596 there was a letter written ... by six men who had escaped and remained in O'Donnel's country, appealing to the King [Philip II] to let them come back to Spain. They said they alone remained of all who landed. These were six men, and this was only eight years after the Armada was defeated. Even supposing these men were wrong and there were a dozen or two more in various parts, there were never enough men to influence in the slightest degree the complexion or the ethnological peculiarities of the inhabitants of the Irish coast.

At any rate, it's all just food for thought. Researching one's ancestry is a fascinating journey!

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson